Hermopolis (or ''Hermopolis Magna'') was a major city in antiquity, located near the boundary between

Lower Lower may refer to: * ''Lower'' (album), 2025 album by Benjamin Booker *Lower (surname) *Lower Township, New Jersey *Lower Receiver (firearms) *Lower Wick Lower Wick is a small hamlet located in the county of Gloucestershire, England. It is sit ...

and

Upper Egypt Upper Egypt ( ', shortened to , , locally: ) is the southern portion of Egypt and is composed of the Nile River valley south of the delta and the 30th parallel North. It thus consists of the entire Nile River valley from Cairo south to Lake N ...

. Its Egyptian name ''Khemenu'' derives from the eight deities (the Ogdoad) said to reside in the city. A provincial capital since the

Old Kingdom of Egypt In ancient Egyptian history, the Old Kingdom is the period spanning –2200 BC. It is also known as the "Age of the Pyramids" or the "Age of the Pyramid Builders", as it encompasses the reigns of the great pyramid-builders of the Fourth Dynasty ...

, Hermopolis developed into a major city of

Roman Egypt Roman Egypt was an imperial province of the Roman Empire from 30 BC to AD 642. The province encompassed most of modern-day Egypt except for the Sinai. It was bordered by the provinces of Crete and Cyrenaica to the west and Judaea, ...

, and an early

Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...

center from the third century. It was abandoned after the Muslim conquest of Egypt but was restored as both a

Latin Catholic The Latin Church () is the largest autonomous () particular church within the Catholic Church, whose members constitute the vast majority of the 1.3 billion Catholics. The Latin Church is one of 24 ''sui iuris'' churches in full communion w ...

(meanwhile suppressed) and a Coptic Orthodox

titular see A titular see in various churches is an episcopal see of a former diocese that no longer functions, sometimes called a "dead diocese". The ordinary or hierarch of such a see may be styled a "titular metropolitan" (highest rank), "titular archbi ...

. Its remains are located near the modern town of el-Ashmunein (from the Coptic name) in Mallawi, Minya Governorate, Egypt.

Name

The common English name is Hermopolis ( ''Hermoúpolis'' "the City of

Hermes Hermes (; ) is an Olympian deity in ancient Greek religion and mythology considered the herald of the gods. He is also widely considered the protector of human heralds, travelers, thieves, merchants, and orators. He is able to move quic ...

", also ''Hermopolis Magna'', ''Hermoû pólis megálẽ'', (reconstructed pronunciation), Egyptological pronunciation: "Khemenu"; ''Shmūn'', and thus ). ''Khemenu'' (), the

Egyptian language The Egyptian language, or Ancient Egyptian (; ), is an extinct branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts, which were made accessible to the modern world ...

name of the city, means "Eight-Town", after the Ogdoad, a group of eight "primordial" deities whose cult was situated there. The name survived as Coptic ''Shmun'', from which the modern name ''el Ashmunein'' () is derived.G. Mussies in: Matthieu Sybrand Huibert, Gerard Heerma van Voss (eds.), ''Studies in Egyptian Religion: Dedicated to Professor Jan Zandee'' (1982),
p. 92
In

Koine Greek Koine Greek (, ), also variously known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek, Septuagint Greek or New Testament Greek, was the koiné language, common supra-regional form of Greek language, Greek spoken and ...

, the city was called "The City of

" since the Greeks identified Hermes with Thoth, because the city was the main cult centre of Thoth, the Pharaonic god of magic, healing, and wisdom and the patron of scribes. Thoth was associated in the same way with the Phoenician deity Eshmun. Inscriptions at the temple call the god "The Lord of Eshmun".

History

The city was the capital of the Hare nome (the fifteenth nome of

) in the Heptanomis. Hermopolis stood on the borders of Upper and

Lower Egypt Lower Egypt ( ') is the northernmost region of Egypt, which consists of the fertile Nile Delta between Upper Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, from El Aiyat, south of modern-day Cairo, and Dahshur. Historically, the Nile River split into sev ...

, and, for many ages, the

Thebaid The Thebaid or Thebais (, ''Thēbaïs'') was a region in ancient Egypt, comprising the 13 southernmost nome (Egypt), nomes of Upper Egypt, from Abydos, Egypt, Abydos to Aswan. Pharaonic history The Thebaid acquired its name from its proximit ...

or upper country extended much further to the north than in more recent periods. As the border town, Hermopolis was a place of great resort and opulence, ranking second to Thebes alone. A little to south of the city was the castle of Hermopolis, at which point rivercraft from the Thebaid paid tolls (, the Bahr Yussef in

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

). The grottos of

Beni Hasan Beni Hasan (also written as Bani Hasan, or also Beni-Hassan) () is an ancient Egyptian cemetery. It is located approximately to the south of modern-day Minya in the region known as Middle Egypt, the area between Asyut and Memphis.Baines, John ...

, near Antinoöpolis on the opposite bank of the Nile, were the common cemeteries of the Hermopolitans because although the river divided the city from its necropolis, from the wide curve of the western hills at this point, it was easier to ferry the dead over the water than to transport them by land to the hills. Hermopolis became a significant city in the

Roman province The Roman provinces (, pl. ) were the administrative regions of Ancient Rome outside Roman Italy that were controlled by the Romans under the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire. Each province was ruled by a Roman appointed as Roman g ...

of Thebais Prima in the administrative

diocese of Egypt The Diocese of Egypt (; ) was a diocese of the later Roman Empire (from 395 the Eastern Roman Empire), incorporating the provinces of Egypt and Cyrenaica. Its capital was at Alexandria, and its governor had the unique title of '' praefectus au ...

. The principal Egyptian deities worshipped at Hermopolis were Typhon (

Set Set, The Set, SET or SETS may refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Mathematics *Set (mathematics), a collection of elements *Category of sets, the category whose objects and morphisms are sets and total functions, respectively Electro ...

) and Thoth. Typhon was represented by a

hippopotamus The hippopotamus (''Hippopotamus amphibius;'' ; : hippopotamuses), often shortened to hippo (: hippos), further qualified as the common hippopotamus, Nile hippopotamus and river hippopotamus, is a large semiaquatic mammal native to sub-Sahar ...

, on which sat a hawk fighting with a serpent. Thoth, whom the

ancient Greeks Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically re ...

associated with

because they were both gods of magic and writing, was represented by the

ibis The ibis () (collective plural ibises; classical plurals ibides and ibes) are a group of long-legged wading birds in the family Threskiornithidae that inhabit wetlands, forests and plains. "Ibis" derives from the Latin and Ancient Greek word f ...

Ecclesiastical history

A Christian tradition holds it to be the place where the Holy Family found refuge during its exile in Egypt. Hermopolis Maior was a

suffragan diocese A suffragan diocese is one of the dioceses other than the metropolitan archdiocese that constitute an ecclesiastical province. It exists in some Christian denominations, in particular the Catholic Church, the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandr ...

of the provincial capital's Metropolitan Archdiocese of Antinoe, in the sway of the

Patriarchate of Alexandria The Patriarch of Alexandria is the archbishop of Alexandria, Egypt. Historically, this office has included the designation "pope" (etymologically "Father", like "Abbot"). The Alexandrian episcopate was revered as one of the three major episc ...

. Like most, it faded under Islam. List of bishops of Hermopolis: * Conon (circa 250) * Fasileus (in 325) * Dios (circa 350) * Plusianus (4th century) * Andreas (in 431) * Gennadius (circa 444 - after 449) * Victor (circa 448/463) * Ulpianus (6th century) * Johannes I (6th century) * Johannes II (6th-7th century) * Isidorus (7th century) * Eugenius (?) * Paulus (?) The city was a titular diocese in the

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

, and still is (?) in the

Coptic Orthodox Church The Coptic Orthodox Church (), also known as the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, is an Oriental Orthodox Christian church based in Egypt. The head of the church and the See of Alexandria is the pope of Alexandria on the Holy Apo ...

. The diocese was nominally restored in the 18th century as Latin

Titular bishopric A titular see in various churches is an episcopal see of a former diocese that no longer functions, sometimes called a "dead diocese". The ordinary or hierarch of such a see may be styled a "titular metropolitan" (highest rank), "titular archbish ...

of Hermopolis Maior (Latin; 1925-1929 renamed Hermopolis Magna) / Ermopoli Maggiore (Curiate Italian) Its territory was reassigned in 1849 to the Coptic Catholic Eparchy of Mina, as a restoration of Hermopolis (as its Latin title attests). In 1949 the titular see was suppressed, having had the following incumbents, all of the fitting Episcopal (lowest) rank : * Luigi Antonio Valdina Cremona (1729.03.23 – death 1758.10.24) (Italian) no actual prelature recorded * Dominik Józef Kiełczewski (1760.07.21 – death 1776.02.28) as

Auxiliary Bishop An auxiliary bishop is a bishop assigned to assist the diocesan bishop in meeting the pastoral and administrative needs of the diocese. Auxiliary bishops can also be titular bishops of sees that no longer exist as territorial jurisdictions. ...

of Roman Catholic Diocese of Chełm (Poland) (1760.07.21 – retired 1775.07.14) and on emeritate *

Bishop-elect A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of dioceses. The role ...

? Bernardo Maria Serio (1802.08.09 – death ?) as Auxiliary Bishop of Archdiocese of Palermo (Sicily, Italy) (1802.08.09 – ?) * Denis-Antoine-Luc de Frayssinous (French) (1822.04.19 – death 1841.12.12) no actual prelature recorded * Antoni Melchior Fijałkowski (1842.01.27 – 1856.09.18) as

Apostolic Administrator An apostolic administration in the Catholic Church is administrated by a prelate appointed by the pope to serve as the ordinary for a specific area. Either the area is not yet a diocese (a stable 'pre-diocesan', usually missionary apostolic admi ...

of Archdiocese of Warszawa (Warschau, Poland) (1844 – 1856.09.18); later succeeded as Metropolitan Archbishop of Warszawa (1856.09.18 – 1861.10.05) * Agostino Franco (1858.06.15 – death 1877) as Ordinary of Silicia of the Italo-Albanese (Italy) (1858.06.15 – 1859) and Ordinary of Italia continentale of the Italo-Albanese (Italy) (1858.06.15 – 1860) * Charles-Bonaventure-François Theuret (1878.07.15 – 1887.03.15) as

of the Subiaco Benedictine Abbey nullius of Saints-Nicholas-et-Benoît (

Monaco Monaco, officially the Principality of Monaco, is a Sovereign state, sovereign city-state and European microstates, microstate on the French Riviera a few kilometres west of the Regions of Italy, Italian region of Liguria, in Western Europe, ...

) (1878.07.15 – 1887.03.15); later (see promoted) first Bishop of

(Monaco) (1887.03.15 – death 1901.11.11) * Father Jan Ignacy Korytkowski (1888.04.27 – 1888.05.14) as Auxiliary bishop of Archdiocese of Gniezno (Gnesen, Poland) (1888.04.27 – 1888.05.14) * Raphael Valenza (1889.05.24 – death 1897.12.22) as Auxiliary Bishop of Archdiocese of Chieti (Italy) (1889.05.24 – 1897.12.22) * Robert Brindle (1899.01.29 – 1901.12.06) as Auxiliary Bishop of Archdiocese of Westminster (England, UK) (1899.01.29 – 1901.12.06); later Bishop of

Nottingham Nottingham ( , East Midlands English, locally ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located south-east of Sheffield and nor ...

(England) (1901.12.06 – 1915.06.01), emeritus as Titular Bishop of Tacapæ (1915.06.01 – death 1916.06.27) * Juan Bautista Benlloch y Vivo (1901.12.16 – 1906.12.06) as

of Solsona (Spain) (1901.12.16 – 1906.12.06); later Bishop of Urgell (Spain) (1906.12.06 – 1919.01.07), Metropolitan Archbishop of

Burgos Burgos () is a city in Spain located in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is the capital and most populous municipality of the province of Burgos. Burgos is situated in the north of the Iberian Peninsula, on the confluence of th ...

(Spain) (1919.01.07 – death 1926.02.14), created

Cardinal-Priest A cardinal is a senior member of the clergy of the Catholic Church. As titular members of the clergy of the Diocese of Rome, they serve as advisors to the pope, who is the bishop of Rome and the visible head of the worldwide Catholic Church. ...

of S. Maria in Ara Coeli (1921.06.16 – 1926.02.14) * John Jeremiah Lawler (1910.02.08 – 1916.01.29) as Auxiliary Bishop of Archdiocese of Saint Paul (USA) (1910.02.08 – 1916.01.29); later Bishop of Lead (1916.01.29 – 1930.08.01), Bishop of Rapid City (USA) (1930.08.01 – death 1948.03.11) * Giorgio Glosauer (1917.07.07 – death 1926.06.09) as Auxiliary Bishop of Archdiocese of Praha (Prague, Czech Republic) (1917.07.07 – 1926.06.09) * Eduardo José Herberhold,

Friars Minor The Order of Friars Minor (commonly called the Franciscans, the Franciscan Order, or the Seraphic Order; postnominal abbreviation OFM) is a mendicant Catholic religious order, founded in 1209 by Francis of Assisi. The order adheres to the t ...

(O.F.M.) (1928.01.07 – 1931.01.30) as Coadjutor Bishop-Prelate of Territorial Prelature of Santarem (Brazil) (1928.01.07 – 1931.01.30); later Bishop of Ilhéus (Brazil) (1931.01.30 – death 1939.07.24) * Francesco Fulgenzio Lazzati, O.F.M. (born Italy) (1931.07.14 – 1932.05.24) as

Apostolic Vicar Apostolic may refer to: The Apostles An Apostle meaning one sent on a mission: *The Twelve Apostles of Jesus, or something related to them, such as the Church of the Holy Apostles *Apostolic succession, the doctrine connecting the Christian Churc ...

Mogadishu Mogadishu, locally known as Xamar or Hamar, is the capital and List of cities in Somalia by population, most populous city of Somalia. The city has served as an important port connecting traders across the Indian Ocean for millennia and has ...

(then Italian

Somalia Somalia, officially the Federal Republic of Somalia, is the easternmost country in continental Africa. The country is located in the Horn of Africa and is bordered by Ethiopia to the west, Djibouti to the northwest, Kenya to the southwest, th ...

) (1931.07.14 – 1932.05.24).

Remains

Hermopolis comparatively escaped the frequent wars which, in the decline both of the Pharaonic and Roman eras, devastated the Heptanomis; but, on the other hand, its structures have undergone severe changes under its

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

rulers, who have burned its stones for lime or carried them away for building materials. A surviving Oxyrhynchus Papyrus of the 3rd century CE indicates that high-rise buildings with seven stories existed in the town. The collection of Arabic papyri in the

John Rylands Library The John Rylands Research Institute and Library is a Victorian era, late-Victorian Gothic Revival architecture, neo-Gothic building on Deansgate in Manchester, England. It is part of the University of Manchester. The library, which opened to t ...

, Manchester, contains many documents referring to Hermopolis (''Ushmun''); they date from the 8th to 11th centuries CE.

The temple

The Ibis-headed god Thoth was, with his accompanying emblems, the

Ibis The ibis () (collective plural ibises; classical plurals ibides and ibes) are a group of long-legged wading birds in the family Threskiornithidae that inhabit wetlands, forests and plains. "Ibis" derives from the Latin and Ancient Greek word f ...

and the Cynocephalus monkey, the most conspicuous among the sculptures upon the great portico of the temple of Hermopolis. His designation in inscriptions was "The Lord of Eshmoon". This portico was a work of the Pharaonic era, but the erections of the Ptolemies at Hermopolis were on a scale of great extent and magnificence and, although raised by Greek monarchs, are essentially Egyptian in their conception and execution. The portico, the only remnant of the temple, consists of a double row of pillars, six in each row. The architraves are formed of five stones; each passes from the centre of one pillar to that of the next, according to a well-known usage with Egyptian builders. The intercolumnation of the centre pillars is wider than that of the others; and the stone over the centre is twenty-five feet and six inches long. These columns were painted yellow, red and blue in alternate bands. There is also a peculiarity in the pillars of the Hermopolitan portico peculiar to themselves, or at least discovered only again in the temple of Gournou. (Dénon, ''L'Egypte'', plate 41.) Instead of being formed of large masses placed horizontally above each other, they are composed of irregular pieces, so artfully adjusted that it is difficult to detect the lines of junction. The bases of these columns represent the lower leaves of the lotus; next come a number of concentric rings, like the hoops of a cask; and above these the pillars appear like bunches of reeds held together by horizontal bonds. Including the capital, each column is about 40 feet high; the greatest circumference is about 28 feet, about five feet from the ground, for they diminish in thickness both towards the base and towards the capital. The widest part of the intercolumnation is 17 feet; the other pillars are 13 feet apart.

Coptic Basilica

Outside the temple complex stand the remains of a

basilica In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica (Greek Basiliké) was a large public building with multiple functions that was typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek Eas ...

, built in the 5th century over earlier buildings. It is one of the most impressive Coptic buildings: 55 m long, it features a colonnaded

transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform ("cross-shaped") cruciform plan, churches, in particular within the Romanesque architecture, Romanesque a ...

ending in exedras and side galleries. The

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

with the

apse In architecture, an apse (: apses; from Latin , 'arch, vault'; from Ancient Greek , , 'arch'; sometimes written apsis; : apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical Vault (architecture), vault or semi-dome, also known as an ' ...

is 14.7 m wide, and the width of the

aisle An aisle is a linear space for walking with rows of non-walking spaces on both sides. Aisles with seating on both sides can be seen in airplanes, in buildings such as churches, cathedrals, synagogues, meeting halls, parliaments, courtrooms, ...

s is 5.6 m. The church was discovered in 1942 by Moharam Kamal, later cleaned by an expedition from the

Alexandria University Alexandria University () is a public university in Alexandria, Egypt. It was established in 1938 as a satellite of Fouad University (the name of which was later changed to Cairo University), becoming an independent entity in 1942. It was known as ...

, and in the years 1987–1990 documented by a Polish-Egyptian expedition from the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology University of Warsaw, State Ateliers for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, and the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.

Museum

Currently there is a small open-air museum in which stand two massive statues of Thoth as a baboon worshipping the sun, and a few carved blocks of masonry.

Famous people

* David of Hermopolis * Severus Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ

References

Sources and external links

{{commonscat, Hermopolis Magna
Silhouette of Hermopolis Magna temple-from A History Of Egypt Volume V by J Graflon Milne
retrieved 20:34GMT 27.9.11

* Sayed Hemeda, Abdulrahman Fahmy, Abbas Moustafa, Mahmoud Abd El Hafez,The Early Basilica Church, El-Ashmonein Archaeological Site, Minia, Egypt: Geo-Environmental Analysis and Engineering Characterization of the Building Materials, Open Journal of Geology 09/03 (2019) * Marek Barański
Excavations at the basilica site at el-Ashmunein/ Hermopolis magna in 1987–1990. Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean 3 (1992)
; Bibliography - Ecclesiastical history * Pius Bonifacius Gams, ''Series episcoporum Ecclesiae Catholicae'', Leipzig 1931, p. 461 * Konrad Eubel, ''Hierarchia Catholica Medii Aevi'', vol. 5, p. 219; vol. 6, p. 234 * Michel Lequien, ''Oriens christianus in quatuor Patriarchatus digestus'', Paris 1740, Vol. II, coll. 595-596 * Gaetano Moroni, ''Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica'', Vol. 22, p. 61 * Klaas A. Worp, ''A Checklist of Bishops in Byzantine Egypt (A.D. 325 - c. 750)'', in ''Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik'' 100 (1994) 283-318 Cities in ancient Egypt Archaeological sites in Egypt Former populated places in Egypt Minya Governorate Set (deity) Thoth Hermes